


Reaper

by LinguistLove_24



Category: Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Madam President - Freeform, Songfic, poetic fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 19:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11720898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinguistLove_24/pseuds/LinguistLove_24
Summary: "People would always see of her what they wanted, what they chose.Tonight, none of that matters. Tonight, she will be – she must be – presidential."AU.





	Reaper

**Author's Note:**

> So the styling of this is quite different from what I normally write, but it was in my head and I was aiming for a sort of poetic aspect. The italicized bits are flashbacks, not in order of occurrence, but in order of Hillary's recollections. 
> 
> A mixture of things inspired this, but I sat down to write it whilst listening to [Andie Case's cover of Reaper by Sia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2-44hgaDLI) on a loop, so that's where the bolded bits come from, and I've interjected the lyrics into the work where they fit.

**Reaper**

 

_Walking briskly down the street, she is shielded from the biting cold only by the down of an insulated winter jacket. Its hood does not completely cover her face, allowing the wind to whip across her cheeks until they are turned a rosy shade of pink. Gaze is fixated straight ahead, her steps purpose driven. They take her past street signs and shops which are so familiar she could recite their locations in her sleep. Mind whirring with thoughts of all she has not done, all she has yet to do, she stops outside a hole in the wall sort of venue oft frequented when she finds herself on the other side of the globe._

 

_A porcelain hand connects with the cool metal of a doorknob, and she pulls. For the next ninety minutes, she is determined not to think of work. Decided, perhaps, that she will not think at all._

 

_“Hillary!”_

 

_“Madam Secretary!”_

 

_“Over here!”_

 

_...”Just one moment of your time...”_

 

 _..._ _**You try to drag me down, you follow me like the darkest cloud, but no baby, no baby, not today...** _

 

_She pulls the door handle more forcefully, affording herself a large enough space to slide through, and her peripheral catches the reflective glare of flashing bulbs, intrusive, blinding lights._

 

_**...No baby, not today..**_

 

_They will say she's a bitch, discount any and all previous deeds of benevolence, but she will not spare ninety minutes throwing herself to the wolves._

 

_She saunters inside, hips swaying with a resolute sort of confidence she was forced to master long ago, reconciled that she will not turn around._

 

_///_

 

_It is early morning. The sun has fully risen, but dew undoubtedly still clings to patches of lawn outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue._

 

_She watches her husband, follows his paces with her eyes, and she knows he is ashamed. Tears are spilling forth as an after effect of frustration and boiling blood. She hears the whisper of hesitation lacing every tentative step, and as he moves closer, blue orbs of a different shade implore her to forgive. She loves him. So deeply the abyss is never ending, but she cannot extend to him something she cannot find. In a heated moment, the committal of a thoughtless, selfish transgression, he'd tainted his own portrait, shifted the focus of his presidency from his agenda onto himself._

 

_She is aware of his heart, of all his good intentions._

 

_She knows too, however, that the road to Hell is paved that way._

 

_**...Broke down thought that I would drown, hope that I'd be found 'fore I hit the ground...**_

 

_**..Saw you weeping, saw you creeping, saw you sneaking in the shadows' dawn, the fear so strong, saw you out the corner of my eye...** _

 

_You could not close the heart to all things you did not wish to feel, only the eyes to all things you did not want to see._

 

 _“Darling, I am so,_ so _sorry.”_

 

_The apology had slipped from his lips countless times over, for countless reasons, nearly all of them mundane. Nothing about this instance fell into that category._

 

_Her ears take in the sounds of his voice, the intonations in his plea, but she does not want to be privy to a visual of all the brokenness which surrounds her any longer, can not take to see him cry, so she closes her eyes to it all. As she screws them shut, the last of wet droplets cascade down her face in time with ragged breaths. Not for the first time, she longs for just a few fleeting moments where they are really and truly alone, afforded privacy in which to unload the weight of their heaviest burdens, because in this House, they never are._

 

_///_

 

_Her eyes are glued to the television screen. The map sprawled out across it has slowly and steadily become shaded in a sea of blue._  
  
_“Honey, you're_ doing _it!”_

_Bill is screaming, nails of the hand he has fused with his wife digging into her palm._

 

_Chelsea clings white knuckled to the back of a sofa, silently crying._

 

_Her mother takes in the distant hiss of a champagne bottle being uncorked, feels her skin flush and finds herself completely unable to breathe. She is floating. Flying, landing, and launching all over again. She has made it._

 

_... **So come back when I'm good and old, I got drinks to drink and men to hold...** _

 

_... **Don't come for me today, I'm feeling good, let me savour it..** _

 

_///_

She takes the chair from beneath her dressing table in the Residence and places it crookedly in front of an antique full length mirror. The artefact is the only company she has, having begged the bevy of aides forever flanking her for a few stolen moments off to herself before having to give her first televised State of the Union address. Seated ahead of the looking glass, she places her hands in her lap, straightens her posture. Pose statuesque, she exhales deeply, her chin juts forward as she examines her reflection.

 

She is painted in balms and powders, her face coated in foundation. Even with the assistance of maquillage, the part of her being forever preoccupied with a necessity for perfection is dissatisfied.

 

There is a soft knock on the door, one which she ignores at first.

 

“Hillary?”

 

It becomes louder, more insistent.

 

Wandering aimlessly throughout the ample space, adrift in solitude and retrospect, she'd completely abandoned the notion of selecting an appropriate outfit, piecing it together with jewellery that accentuated her already made up face.

 

“I'm not ready yet,” she calls, recognising the voice.

 

“You don't have too much more time, Madam President,” Huma calls through the heavy doors.

 

“I am aware, thank you.”

 

Running a hand through dishevelled hair, she lets loose an audible sigh. She has asked for this job, and gladly, she will do it, but she is tired. Plagued by a kind of fatigue she could not ever describe to an outsider.

 

As they had done leading up to the election, opponents and detractors of every kind continued trying to derail her at every possible turn.

 

She stands on every brick they throw, using it as a building block, but as she runs her hands over her face in the mirror, she wonders again if any of them remember that she is human.

 

With a heart as rhythmic as a beating drum, crying tears that fall like rain in the rare instances they are let free.

 

She wonders too, if they know of her laughter; how abundant it is, how freely it comes, the sparkle it makes manifest in her eyes when people are not calling her cold.

 

Once, she'd heard said that before you got to Washington, you probably thought of yourself as a good person.

 

She still does.

 

But she is a woman in what has always been a man's job.

 

She knows from experience, that Washington is where the Reaper dwells.

 

“Hill?”

 

The voice outside the door sees the corners of her mouth lifting up into a smile.

 

“Baby,” she breathes happily as Bill saunters into the quarters without waiting for invitation.

 

“Are you ready?”

 

He stands in front of her, gaze cast downward, adoration mingling with inquisition. In this moment, when he looks at her, there is no need for apology.

 

“Not yet,” she says, and he notes ill disguised apprehension.

 

“You don't have much time, love.”

 

“You sound like Huma,” she teases.

 

“What's the matter?” Bill asks softly. “You nervous?”

 

“A little bit,” she tells him, toying with his fingers. “I guess there are benefits to being continually surrounded by other people. I've spent too much time in my own head.”

 

“I know that feeling,” he brings her knuckles to his lips, touching down on them with light, feathery kisses. “What were you thinking about?”

 

“Everything,” she says. The truth.

 

“You're gonna be fine,” Bill soothes, stepping a few paces back.

 

“This is worth it, right?” she questions, fanning an arm through the open air.

 

“Baby, of course it is. I know it doesn't feel like it sometimes, but it is. People need you, love.”

 

“Sorry,” she dismisses herself. “I should be used to this by now.”

 

“Don't apologise,” Bill tells her, stepping forward and pulling her close again. “I don't think it's something you ever really get used to.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“For what?” he asks, brow cocked.

 

“Being here with me. I need you just as much as people need me.”

 

“Well I'm not going anywhere.”

 

“I know,” she whispers. “I'd better get ready.”

 

Bill nods, turning on his heel to leave her to her own devices.

 

“Oh,” he says as an afterthought, doubling back. “These are for you.”

 

A little black box is extracted from his pocket, extended to his wife as she peers curiously at it.

 

“What is this?”

 

“Open it and find out,” Bill laughs, and she obliges.

 

A pair of stars, inset with diamonds, twinkle up at her from their place poked into a velvety cushion.

 

“They're beautiful,” she says in gratitude. “Thank you, darling. I'll wear them tonight.”

 

She reaches up behind her ear, unscrews the backs of earrings she'd already chosen.

 

“You're welcome,” Bill says. “Now get ready.”

 

The door closes behind him with a soft click and she exhales a sigh of relief, all previous tension and qualms seeming to leave her body simultaneously.

 

She peers into the mirror, examining her reflective image for one final moment. She has flaws, many of them clearly visible to her naked eye. She has a past, as anyone does, turbulence along many of its routes.

 

People would always see of her what they wanted, what they chose.

 

Tonight, none of that matters. Tonight, she will be – she must be – presidential.

 

Washington may be where the Reaper dwells, but it is also her home.

 

A place she's walked alongside her husband, in the midst of his every triumph and tribulation in kind.

 

A place where he would do the same for her.

 

No Reaper could take that from them.

 

They are strongest together.

 

_**...I remember when you came to take me away, so close I was to heaven's gates,  
but no baby, no baby, not today...** _


End file.
